CPC proposes change on Chinese president's term in Constitution

[mike2000 is back]

Why cannot compare Singapore's situation with China.?
With a troublesome neighbor at the back who are partners with the CIA to foment insurgency and secession in Tibet.
Probable unrest in Xinjiang.
Troublemakers in Hong Kong.
Impending reunification with Taiwan.
Unfinished business in the South China Sea with squatters still occupying Chinese islands.
Most importantly, the US is doubling down its efforts to sabotage the rise of China.
There are still much business requiring a strong leader of Xi's calibre.

NOPE cant be compared, and everything you mentioned above has absolutely nothing to do with why Xi changed the constitution to lift the 2 term limit so he can stay in power for as long as he wants. So that point is void.

 

[KingWest]

Yeah, I know, but I just don't really understand why a modern western democracy like UK needs a Queen to play a "Ceremonial role" for a perfectly functional country. To many, it is just a huge waste of tax payers' money. Anyway, it is UK's business.

Why would it be a waste of taxpayers money? Woudnt the same money need to be spend on a ceremonial president if they get rid of the queen? Or a ceremonial prime minister if the president has the power? Furthermore, a queen brings in a lot of money for the country since lots of other countries value a traditional king/queen. So when the queen goes on a ceremonial trip outside the UK, she brings in money. The same with the Belgian king. He goes on trade missions to gain more investment. A president can not get the same traditional respect.

 

[mike2000 is back]

Precisely because China is a developing country with 1.4 billion people, Xi may need more time to keep the momentum going. Besides, Xi obviously has the unification of China in mind, and the time seems ripe.

So you think Xi changed the constitution just because he wants to keep the momentum going? His predecessors could have used exactly the same excuse to cling to power beyond their mandated term limit. As I said before the irony with such one man power rule/dictator is that if their predecessors had used the same tactic he is using today to remain in power, then Xi Jingping himself would never have had the opportunity to be president today and nobody will even know him, in this regard Hu Jintao would still be president to this day. Therein lies the problem with dictators and one man power/rulers who don't want to cede power to the next person in line and will keep using the excuse of ONLY ME CAN LEAD THIS COUNTRY AND MOVE IT FORWARD. We will never know if the next leader would have better than even him, just like we would have never know if Hu Jintao's successor is better than him(if Hu stayed in power way beyond his term limit).

What are the long term consequences from this short term gain post Xi.?
Can the world afford a political flaw in a country with the military and economic might of China.
Judging from the past performance of a strong China with Confucian values I wouldn't worry too much.
I agree the Chinese should deliberate carefully on this not trivial change to their constitution.

So you think the CCP has SUDDENLY become so incompetent and corrupt that they don't have any other official/person who can achieve all this or what Xi can achieve right?

If he needs one more term to finish the unfinished business, so be it

That's a dangerous way of looking at things bro. Many dictators around the world say exactly the same thing you just said to legitimise their rule and justify their stay in power. 10 years is enough to make your mark in a country. Barack Obama even joked about this once when he visited Africa at the AU headquarters. he too could have gone for an unlimited stay in power and won a '3rd,4th,5th or 6th term as the American people would have voted kept voting for him, so he can completely finish what he started(things like his Obama care which was unfinished business as well).

 

[52051]

Just be relaxed

Xi wont be another Mao or Stalin or whatever Middle-east or African strongmen, for the simple fact he dont have the kind of wide support from public nor he has the kind of accomplishment to justify that, Xi dont even enjoy the kind of support like Deng Xiaoping, and now it is the internet age.

The reason why Xi rose to power and do things he want now is because people, including many of the powerful old red guards hate serious corruption started in 1990s, and he gain his favors from alot of old red guards for his anti-corruption war, and gain alot of general public support for that as well.

The powerful old red guards and the so-called red-second-gen can put him in power despite the resistence from corrupted elites, and they can pull anyone out of power if they become corrupted, China has its own way of balance and check here.

To gain the popularity comparable to Mao or Stalin, he need to win wars, I mean not the kind of small war like Taiwan war etc, he get a very long way to go.

My father has friends from the so-called red-second-generation (sons of the old reds), with all the information I get, I believe Xi's goal is to elminate corruption, and the resistance is very heavy and powerful (money is a really powerful thing it has the magic to united men very strongly), if he ended his term just like Hu, the next chairman may not be as determined as Xi in elminating corrpution.

The US's corruption become out of control and come to a very advanced stage, where corrupted politicans re-wrtie laws to make their corruption legal, China should not become that, if Xi can take down corruption in China in 10-15 years, I think he will do China a big favor, and yes, it worth that.

And no, Xi's anti-corruption is not just a way to elminate the one who opposed him as west fake news love to say, he arrested some of his "allies" for corruption as well, including the recent General Fang Fenghui, who is a general promoted by Xi just a year ago or so, he just target everyone who are corrupted.

 

[TaiShang]

Now the burden is on Xi to justify this extraordinary measure, and the final unification of China will be a fine justification for me.

I believe during this tenure of President Xi, China will achieve middle income status and national institutions will be pretty much cleaned from embedded corruption problems. If President Xi really gets a third term in office, that will be China's moment to achieve full national unification.

The false flag Indian (or a foreign face from Hong Kong) above is so worked up because a third term in office will mean China eventually achieves complete territorial sovereignty and on par national power with whatever the strongest country in the world.

Xi is the nightmare, the nightmare of neoliberal market fundamentalists and cultural degenerates that have tried their best to ideologically corrupt China while allowing it a certain space for development. They have dreamed for an imperfect sovereignty for China, much as Japan and Korea, but, under Xi, this is the least potential thing to happen.

Because President Xi knows discourse is as important as steel mills. Weaponized information and culture is an essential aspect of economic fundamentals. President Xi openly said many times (more often than his two predecessors) that China will never copy a Western model. China offers its own model (but not dictate it).

This is the ground the West and their lapdogs do not want to lose. They may tolerate losing manufacturing jobs to China, but they won't be tolerating losing idea production and model making to China. Hence the hysteria.

Hysteria is good. It may lead to hasty and wrong moves by the opponents. I would presume that the most unhappy is the few HK separatists; and that guy on this forum spewing Joshua Wang-style propaganda feels it.

In any case, their (as well as their masters') slim chances may now be over for good.

They might as well have hoped for a reversal after a two-term Xi presidency with a more ideologically-tamed leadership. That's over. The ideology they promote will be entirely dead by the time (if) President Xi completes a third term.

Again, great, strategic move, but, some of us across Greater China will be thankful for it only after we see the very positive results -- the results that scares the hell out of anti-China cliques.

 

[gambit]

It sounds like a twisted logic. So it is alright for a democracy to have unlimited terms, but it not OK for a "dictator" to have more than 2 terms?

I never said it is 'alright' for a democracy to have term limits. Personally, I SUPPORT term limits. But that is my personal opinion.

What I am saying is that when a term limit is installed, there had to be a justification for it, and surely inside that justification would be something in the line of prevention of consolidation of power, or despotism, or something detrimental to the political process. You have to find that justification in the Chinese constitution and ask if you -- personally -- approve of the reasoning behind it.

Under the democratic system, term limit is a double edged sword.

On the one hand, a term limit is actually contra-democratic. If the people wanted Roosevelt for a 4th or even 5th term, that is the will of the people. Washington, the first US president, CHOSE not to run for a 3rd term. Have no doubt he would have been overwhelmingly re-elected. Now we move all the way up to the 1940s, Franklin Roosevelt's 3rd term was the impetus for the 22nd Amendment limiting anyone to two terms. Not two consecutive terms, but simply two terms.

On the other hand, assuming the people had a say in it, a term limit is also the will of the people. It seems that the people is conflicted of the system they live under. Any election is a contest between personalities. So if a person wins that contest multiple times, why not let him/her serve multiple times? But then the people also recognize the perils of idolatry -- a personality cult -- so they chose to preempt the possibility of it by installing a term limit.

Removing something that was approved by the people, ostensibly under democratic process and approval, is a serious matter. A term limit is a statement of self restraint by the country, a claim of democratic maturity, and it demands and expects respects from other countries.

Now your China is going backward.

 

[Dungeness]

I never said it is 'alright' for a democracy to have term limits. Personally, I SUPPORT term limits. But that is my personal opinion.

What I am saying is that when a term limit is installed, there had to be a justification for it, and surely inside that justification would be something in the line of prevention of consolidation of power, or despotism, or something detrimental to the political process. You have to find that justification in the Chinese constitution and ask if you -- personally -- approve of the reasoning behind it.

Under the democratic system, term limit is a double edged sword.

On the one hand, a term limit is actually contra-democratic. If the people wanted Roosevelt for a 4th or even 5th term, that is the will of the people. Washington, the first US president, CHOSE not to run for a 3rd term. Have no doubt he would have been overwhelmingly re-elected. Now we move all the way up to the 1940s, Franklin Roosevelt's 3rd term was the impetus for the 22nd Amendment limiting anyone to two terms. Not two consecutive terms, but simply two terms.

On the other hand, assuming the people had a say in it, a term limit is also the will of the people. It seems that the people is conflicted of the system they live under. Any election is a contest between personalities. So if a person wins that contest multiple times, why not let him/her serve multiple times? But then the people also recognize the perils of idolatry -- a personality cult -- so they chose to preempt the possibility of it by installing a term limit.

Removing something that was approved by the people, ostensibly under democratic process and approval, is a serious matter. A term limit is a statement of self restraint by the country, a claim of democratic maturity, and it demands and expects respects from other countries.

Now your China is going backward.

Obviously US has its own version of democracy that is quite different from UK's, both countries are the beacons of democracy that the west has been advocating for the past few hundreds of years. If China decides now to pick a leaf from UK's book and a few from US's book to carve out its own version of governance, why it must mean "going backward"? It is quite self-righteous and self-centric.

Back in 80's when Deng decided to adopt "reform and opening policy", many Chinese had a sense of "going backward". 30 years have past, how many of them would insist the same? CCP's proposal was not a total shock to me, knowing the kind of person Xi is. I am neither for nor against this move, but would rather wait for a decade to see if Xi can justify his extraordinary move. He has a sense of mission and he may just be the person who can accomplish the biggest "Chinese Dream", the final unification of China, for a billion plus Chinese.

Xi may be a strongman, but he is not a corrupt party boss the west media made him out to be. Among 87 million CCP members, there ought to be some who are clean and who are on a mission, Xi may just be both.

I believe during this tenure of President Xi, China will achieve middle income status and national institutions will be pretty much cleaned from embedded corruption problems. If President Xi really gets a third term in office, that will be China's moment to achieve full national unification.

The false flag Indian (or a foreign face from Hong Kong) above is so worked up because a third term in office will mean China eventually achieves complete territorial sovereignty and on par national power with whatever the strongest country in the world.

Xi is the nightmare, the nightmare of neoliberal market fundamentalists and cultural degenerates that have tried their best to ideologically corrupt China while allowing it a certain space for development. They have dreamed for an imperfect sovereignty for China, much as Japan and Korea, but, under Xi, this is the least potential thing to happen.

Because President Xi knows discourse is as important as steel mills. Weaponized information and culture is an essential aspect of economic fundamentals. President Xi openly said many times (more often than his two predecessors) that China will never copy a Western model. China offers its own model (but not dictate it).

This is the ground the West and their lapdogs do not want to lose. They may tolerate losing manufacturing jobs to China, but they won't be tolerating losing idea production and model making to China. Hence the hysteria.

Hysteria is good. It may lead to hasty and wrong moves by the opponents. I would presume that the most unhappy is the few HK separatists; and that guy on this forum spewing Joshua Wang-style propaganda feels it.

In any case, their (as well as their masters') slim chances may now be over for good.

They might as well have hoped for a reversal after a two-term Xi presidency with a more ideologically-tamed leadership. That's over. The ideology they promote will be entirely dead by the time (if) President Xi completes a third term.

Again, great, strategic move, but, some of us across Greater China will be thankful for it only after we see the very positive results -- the results that scares the hell out of anti-China cliques.

At the dawn of China's national rejuvenation, the last thing we want to see is the "Zigzag" policy change that we are witnessing in the US. The 3rd term may give Xi needed time to clean up a country of 1.4 billion, lead China to leapfrog "middle income trap" and take China to the next level.

What he is trying to do may not be understood by most Chinese until much later. It is Xi's destiny to be either "流芳千古" or "遗臭万年”.

As I said before the irony with such one man power rule/dictator is that if their predecessors had used the same tactic he is using today to remain in power, then Xi Jingping himself would never have had the opportunity to be president today and nobody will even know him, in this regard Hu Jintao would still be president to this day.

It would be nice if the development of China, or any other country for that matter, were in such a perfectly linear fashion. Xi and Hu each has his own role to play in different time and space. Hu could not have done what Xi has been doing, and vise versa.

 

[gambit]

Obviously US has its own version of democracy that is quite different from UK's, both countries are the beacons of democracy that the west has been advocating for the past few hundreds of years. If China decides now to pick a leaf from UK's book and a few from US's book to carve out its own version of governance, why it must mean "going backward"? It is quite self-righteous and self-centric.

I have said this in the past -- that democracy is both a goal and a process. There has to be a balance of both in order for the country to be assigned the label ' a democracy'.

For instance...China allows voting, but does not allow competing parties, whereas, in the Western countries, the communist parties by large is allowed to compete for the ideological and political allegiance of the people. You might call our allowance 'extreme' but from our perspective, that 'extreme' is what make us 'democratic'.Take the other extreme of North Korea or the once East Germany. Both has 'Democratic' in their countries' names but no one, not even a Chinese party ideologue, would say with a straight face that those two countries are anything 'democratic'.

So it is not so much a 'version of governance' but the 'degree of democratic practices'. A term limit is a feature of the democratic process because supposedly the imposition came from the people. Did that happened in China? If the official answer is 'Yes', then the inevitable question is 'Did the abrogation of term limit also came from the people?'

The label 'the people' is not to be restricted to Party members, at least not by our standards of democratic practices. The label 'the people' implies a political affiliation with the government and the country, aka 'citizenship', and a citizen is someone independent of party affiliation. A US citizen can be a member of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), not just the Republican or the Democratic parties.

So if the abrogation of term limit came from the Party and not the Chinese people at large, then by our definition of democracy, you cannot use your argument to describe China as a different version of democracy in the same vein as how the US and the UK are different in practice and can still call ourselves 'democracies'.

CCP's proposal was not a total shock to me, knowing the kind of person Xi is. I am neither for nor against this move, but would rather wait for a decade to see if Xi can justify his extraordinary move. He has a sense of mission and he may just be the person who can accomplish the biggest "Chinese Dream", the final unification of China, for a billion plus Chinese.

Xi may be a strongman, but he is not a corrupt party boss the west media made him out to be. Among 87 million CCP members, there ought to be some who are clean and who are on a mission, Xi may just be both.

Then like Mr. Mike asked earlier...You are saying that out of 80-something million, only one is honest? But then again, I did gave Xi the benefit of the doubt back on post 104 page 7.

A term limit is one bulwark against the ODDS of corruption. I said 'odds', implying a potentiality, not yet happening. Am not saying outright that Xi is corrupt. But the fact that there was a term limit in the Chinese Constitution clearly implied that: "Regardless of what is your perceived character, we are not going to allow you even the potentiality of you being corrupted."

Barack Obama may be a righteous man in the eyes of God and may have been at worst inept at some points in his presidency, but the 22nd Amendment basically said to him: "Screw you and your dream of a 3rd term."

If a person is corrupt, then at least the 22nd will prevent him/her from getting worse, assuming the American public has not removed him/her before the first term. A possibility The Orange One is worried about right now.

China still has a lot of internal problems, not merely issues. There is a short video titled 'Down From The Mountain' that painfully illustrate the plight of China's 'left behind children'. The military destruction of Taiwan will have no effects on these children. Further, North Korea is more of a threat to China than Taiwan is. The threat is indirect but no less damaging than if a bomb explodes in downtown Beijing. Internal corruption is more of a threat to state stability and integrity than Taiwan is a threat militarily. The reality is that if you go down the list of problems in terms of urgency of resolution and degree of difficulty of resolution, Taiwan would be at the bottom of that list.

 

[Dungeness]

I have said this in the past -- that democracy is both a goal and a process. There has to be a balance of both in order for the country to be assigned the label ' a democracy'.

For instance...China allows voting, but does not allow competing parties, whereas, in the Western countries, the communist parties by large is allowed to compete for the ideological and political allegiance of the people. You might call our allowance 'extreme' but from our perspective, that 'extreme' is what make us 'democratic'.Take the other extreme of North Korea or the once East Germany. Both has 'Democratic' in their countries' names but no one, not even a Chinese party ideologue, would say with a straight face that those two countries are anything 'democratic'.

So it is not so much a 'version of governance' but the 'degree of democratic practices'. A term limit is a feature of the democratic process because supposedly the imposition came from the people. Did that happened in China? If the official answer is 'Yes', then the inevitable question is 'Did the abrogation of term limit also came from the people?'

The label 'the people' is not to be restricted to Party members, at least not by our standards of democratic practices. The label 'the people' implies a political affiliation with the government and the country, aka 'citizenship', and a citizen is someone independent of party affiliation. A US citizen can be a member of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA), not just the Republican or the Democratic parties.

So if the abrogation of term limit came from the Party and not the Chinese people at large, then by our definition of democracy, you cannot use your argument to describe China as a different version of democracy in the same vein as how the US and the UK are different in practice and can still call ourselves 'democracies'.


Then like Mr. Mike asked earlier...You are saying that out of 80-something million, only one is honest? But then again, I did gave Xi the benefit of the doubt back on post 104 page 7.

A term limit is one bulwark against the ODDS of corruption. I said 'odds', implying a potentiality, not yet happening. Am not saying outright that Xi is corrupt. But the fact that there was a term limit in the Chinese Constitution clearly implied that: "Regardless of what is your perceived character, we are not going to allow you even the potentiality of you being corrupted."

Barack Obama may be a righteous man in the eyes of God and may have been at worst inept at some points in his presidency, but the 22nd Amendment basically said to him: "Screw you and your dream of a 3rd term."

If a person is corrupt, then at least the 22nd will prevent him/her from getting worse, assuming the American public has not removed him/her before the first term. A possibility The Orange One is worried about right now.

China still has a lot of internal problems, not merely issues. There is a short video titled 'Down From The Mountain' that painfully illustrate the plight of China's 'left behind children'. The military destruction of Taiwan will have no effects on these children. Further, North Korea is more of a threat to China than Taiwan is. The threat is indirect but no less damaging than if a bomb explodes in downtown Beijing. Internal corruption is more of a threat to state stability and integrity than Taiwan is a threat militarily. The reality is that if you go down the list of problems in terms of urgency of resolution and degree of difficulty of resolution, Taiwan would be at the bottom of that list.

You are good at typing, but honestly your text lost me.

Nobody says China fits the western definition of "Democracy", so what is your point?

 

[艹艹艹]

fully support
great “orob”

 

[TOTUU]

Xi's estimated net worth is near $1bil. So yes, he wants a few more yrs to...errrr...'eliminate' corruption in the Chinese government.

1 billion dollars is very cheap ，XI at least coast 100 billion dollars .If trump can make America great again, it's worth 100 billion ， too .

 

[ddlee96969]

good emperor shall keep the mandate of heaven longer

李光耀(li guang yao) is a great leader, but i am not sure president xi will do better than li guang yao.
i dont konw if the political model of singapore is a goog way.

Different... Yuan Shikai is a big dictator, and no one is against him. But when Yuan Shikai crowned himself as an emperor. The civil war broke out...

Xi Jinping is not a dictator, and I don't think he has the ability to shake CPC elite group. his term will end in 2023, and there will be no change.

xi did not point out who is t he next president.

 

[艹艹艹]

xi did not point out who is t he next president.

me

 

[gambit]

You are good at typing, but honestly your text lost me.

Nobody says China fits the western definition of "Democracy", so what is your point?

My point is that you cannot compare China to the US/UK in terms of different styles of governance. We are democracies in both goal and practice. China, while seemingly has some democratic tools, is not. China is a single party authoritarian country, so from our democratic perspective, removing term limit is nowhere the same as 'pick a leaf' from our book when your term limit did not came from the people. The Party picked a leaf from a different book.

 

[艹艹艹]

My point is that you cannot compare China to the US/UK in terms of different styles of governance. We are democracies in both goal and practice. China, while seemingly has some democratic tools, is not. China is a single party authoritarian country, so from our democratic perspective, removing term limit is nowhere the same as 'pick a leaf' from our book when your term limit did not came from the people. The Party picked a leaf from a different book.